On a hot day in June, a jury convened to review nearly 400 entries to The Architect’s Newspaper‘s first Best of Products competition. Submissions, divided over eight categories, abounded in new materials and exciting technologies, provoking a lively dialogue during the evaluation process.

While the complete roster of winners can be found in our just-published print edition, AN will be publishing the results daily over the next week. Today’s categories, Finishes + Surfaces and Interiors + Furnishings, evidenced a trend toward dramatic design.

Chicago is best known for Wrigley Field and the Sears Tower (yes, the Sears Tower), but one of its most prominent urban features is the elevated train tracks that form the “Loop,” or the downtown area bound by this snaking steel goliath. However poetic the idea of the “El” might be, it brute steel structure could, like most raised infrastructures, use some improvements.

It has become common fair to refer to any and all rails-to-trails project as a certain city’s “High Line. ” (Yup, we’ve been guilty of that too.) The ubiquitous High Line comparison might be flattering, but it’s obviously too simplistic. It glosses over site-specific details and rings a bit too New York–centric.

For Two World Trade Center, Bjarke Ingels has created a tower with multiple personalities. From the 9/11 Memorial, the building, with its seamless glass facade, appears like a somber glass giant huddled around the hallowed site with its peers. But from pretty much anywhere else, the building is quite expressive with a stepped massing scheme that appears like a stack of boxes, a ziggurat sliced in half, or a staircase for King King.

As part of Mayor de Blasio’s mission to eliminate traffic deaths in New York City, his administration has committed $250 million toward its “Great Streets” initiative to redesign four of the city’s most dangerous arterial roadways: 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and Queens, Queens Boulevard, and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

The top-of-the-line new residences by New York-based firm SOMA boast the tagline: “crafted for the most privileged of the privileged few”—and it’s easy to see why. Rising at the entrance to the Palm Jumeirah, one of Dubai’s artificial islands, the One at Palm consists of 90 exclusive residences, the units arranged in alternately pulled-in and pulled-out configurations across each level so that each apartment is guaranteed 360-degree views.

Starwood Hotels has announced that it will open The Westin Hamburg next year in the much-anticipated Elbe Philharmonic complex. The 10-story, 205-bedroom hotel by architects Herzog & de Meuron will be housed within a glass-fronted, wave-shaped building that sits atop a historic warehouse on the banks of the river Elbe. Boasting a pointed, wave-shaped roof, the complex will also feature three concert halls, 45 private apartments and a more than 43,000 square foot, publicly accessible plaza offering 360-degree city views.

The islands of Ijburg, with Center Island jutting out to the right (Courtesy Amsterdam)

Amsterdam’s overflow population will soon have a roof over its head—and artificial sand bars beneath its feet. Europe’s boldest engineering and housing program yet proposes a series of artificial islands built over Ijmeer Lake, with shoreline houses occupying sand bars made using a so-called “pancake method.”

Its final. Alejandro Aravena has been named Director of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The Chilean architect will have just 10 months to prepare the exhibition, which opens May 28. He follows David Chipperfield and Rem Koolhaas in directing the exhibition.